Occupational therapists' perceptions of artificial intelligence: Potential, preparedness, and training needs.
Claire Del Rio, Helen Nelson, Danielle Hitch
PMID 42084275WHAT IT FOUND
Occupational therapists in an Australian health service rated their AI knowledge and skills as poor to fair and reported low preparedness, yet still saw AI as likely to improve patient care.
No group differed by experience or setting.
Key findings
01Occupational therapists rated their AI knowledge, skills, and confidence as poor to fair, and reported a lack of preparedness for AI implementation, while still seeing AI as likely to improve patient care and clinical decision-making.
02No statistically significant differences in AI perceptions or literacy were found across service setting, years of experience, or prior AI exposure.
03Knowledge and skills were strongly correlated (r = 0.72, P < 0.001), as were skills and confidence (r = 0.71, P < 0.001), indicating these dimensions of AI literacy move together.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
Single-site sample of 53 therapists from one Melbourne health service; 96% were female and the mean age was 29.4 years with a mean of 7.3 years of practice, so the findings may not represent the full Australian OT workforce. All measures were self-report on a 5-point scale; the Likert items were not psychometrically validated (the authors note this explicitly). Cross-sectional design means no causal claims can be made and no change over time is captured. Mean AI experience was 0.47 years, so the sample reflects therapists with almost no prior AI exposure; findings may not generalise to OTs who already use AI tools daily. The lack of significant group differences may reflect limited statistical power rather than true equivalence across settings and experience levels.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest. No funding source is stated in the text provided. Generative AI tools were used only for writing clarity and language editing during manuscript preparation; no AI was used to generate content, data, or analysis.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the positive attitudes toward AI as evidence that AI tools work well in occupational therapy. This is a perceptions survey of 53 therapists at one Melbourne site, not a study of AI's clinical effectiveness. The self-rated competence scores all fell in the poor-to-fair range, meaning these therapists are not yet equipped to critically evaluate AI outputs, and the study does not test whether any specific AI intervention improves patient outcomes.